Forget the Picoo Z's, no matter how much fun they are they can't be as cool as making and flying your own indoor remote-control 'copter. And over at this site there's a set of instructions that'll help you DIY, assuming you have some spare CD drive motors and servos lying around, and are happy with soldering and detailed rotor-carving. The instructions even say how to add a wireless cam beneath the fuselage... useful for, um, imaging the precise moment you crash it into your cat? I suspect more nefarious purposes. Still, it's a full cyclic-control aircraft, so it should be extremely flyable. [Heliproject via Hacknmod]

Read More »

This Olympics Village model made by an expert card-stacker makes the Lego Olympics look just naff in comparison. I mean, that model's just a lot of plastic parts snapped together: This guy had to avoid shaky hands, sneezing and stepping incautiously for a whole 20 days while he put the card model together, detailing even the woven-girder shapes of the Bird's Nest. Yup— that's 20 days, 140,000 cards and 100% craziness. [Random Good Stuff]

Read More »

It may not sound much different that a weed-whacker, but I can assure you that if this 1/6 scale replica of the 1964 Corvette L76 327 cubic-inch V8 was put into a tiny car, it would give a Leprechaun the ride of its life. The mini four-stroke engine was fabricated from scratch by a guy named Jim Moyer, and it can hit a staggering 11,000 RPM when opened up. Impressive.

Read More »

This is a model of Shanghai as projected for 2020 by Chinese authorities. At 1,000 square feet, it's perhaps the biggest model of a city in the world, and--for sure--the best place ever for two grown men to wear their Gamera and Godzilla latex costumes and fight to death. The gigantic dimensions and the detail shown in the photographs are just mind-blowing.

Read More »

Giz reader Peter Clute saw the impressive Hasbro Millennium Falcon and instead of just buying it to play and go all pew-pew with it, he decided to make it better, painting new wear and tear details, and adding a motion sensor and infrared sensor, and a load of extra LEDs. The results are impressive:

Read More »

This is an Airbus A380--the largest passenger aircraft in the world--eaten alive by an Antonov AN-124--the largest mass-produced cargo aeroplane in the world (which I filmed inside at Dubai's airport). Before you exclaim "Photoshop!", this is a real photo by Dmitry Avdeev. However, it's not a real A380: it's a 1/3 scale model, which makes it the biggest aircraft replica in the world. So big, in fact, that its 26.5m wingspan is a metre wider than a real Concorde. Seeing it completely built in video gives you an idea of its gigantic scale.

Read More »

Robots robots robots... from sexy ones to fighting ones, we love them here at Giz. But this amazing project by commenter winchy_matt over at Robosavvy has me in two minds. It's a modified DIY hexapod robot with a motorised Dremel-tool nose, and Matt's written some code that lets the robot move the cutting tool with precision, so it acts like a little precision CNC mill. And it's amazing: wait til you see the video of it in action, carving out a model. But is this project a scary step towards self-replicating 'bots?

Read More »

Not everything was about the stunning A-10 Warthog at last week's Top Gun 2008 competition, the largest R/C event in the world. 10,000 people watched the 120 invitation-only R/C airplanes competition—which included everything from from World War I Fokker fighters to WW2's Mustangs and Lightnings to Vietnam War's Phantoms, and plenty of civil aviation models. Gigantic gallery of this year's edition after the jump.

Read More »

They may not be made of LEGO or Star Wars-related, but if you like amazingly detailed, huge aircraft models—like the SR-71 above—head to Lakeland, Florida, and Top Gun 2008: the 20th anniversary edition of the biggest RC model competition in the world. It starts tomorrow, five days of pure nerdgasm watching the most stunning remote control aircraft in the world. More details, plus a gigantic gallery from 2007 after the jump.

Read More »

This is THE Millennium Falcon toy that never arrived when every 9-yo kid wanted it back in 1977—and now every 39-yo fanboy is going to buy to secretly play with it in the closet: the 2.5-foot Hasbro's Star Wars Legacy Collection Millennium Falcon. It's probably the closest model to the movie you can get this side of an actual prop, with LEDs everywhere, sound, movable parts, and absolutely every detail imaginable. And when I say every detail, I mean every single detail:

Read More »